Facebook Drops Face Recognition in Europe Amid Privacy Concerns

Under fire from regulators, Facebook agreed to switch off its face recognition feature for its users in the European Union, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner announced in a press release Friday.

“This feature has already been turned off for new users in the EU and templates for existing users will be deleted by 15 October,” Commissioner Billy Hawkes said in the release.

Face recognition allows Facebook to suggest name tags to users for photos uploaded on the site.

Following 22 complaints by an Austrian group against Facebook in August 2011, the commissioner conducted a comprehensive audit[2] of the social networking site’s compliance with Irish and EU law, that was released in December 2011.